How Green Were My Cronies

One of the signature issues of the Obama administration has been “green energy.” From its first day in office, the Green Regime has attempted to get America to convert to the so-called “renewable” sources of energy: biofuels (especially corn ethanol), geothermal power, wind power, and solar power.

Behind its ideological commitment to green energy, however, is a solid core of self-interest. It gets a huge amount of financial support from environmental organizations, and a large number of wealthy environmentalists. It is using its funding and regulatory power to reward these donors, giving them not only psychic benefits but also material ones.

In short, it is green for the green.

This crony green capitalism has two sides: a regulatory side (negative) and a subsidization side (positive). Both sides are needed, because “renewable energy” sources are seldom even remotely price competitive with fossil fuels. Not only must they be subsidized by government, because private investors are reluctant to put up their own money for them, but they can become saleable only if the government drives up the cost of fossil fuels by piling up regulations on fossil fuel production.

The regulatory side of crony green capitalism is the administration's jihad against all fossil fuel industries. It has locked away vast parts of the continent from oil and gas drilling, and has fought the new fracking technology tooth and nail. It has set loose the EPA with the goal of ending the use of coal, and has severely restricted drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And it is opposing even the exploration of the US continental shelf.

The flip side is the lavish subsidization of so-called green energy sources, especially wind and solar. It is here that the play for pay game gets frisky. A flurry of recent reports about who has gotten these taxpayer subsidies dramatically increases the stench of corruption that emanates from the Regime.

It is hard to know just where to begin, but we can start with Solyndra, that striking piece of rentseeking dreck Obama boasted would create tons of jobs. We first learned that the billionaire who backed the company, George Kaiser, was a big donor to and “bundler” (i.e., a collector of donations ostensibly from others) for the Obama campaign. Kaiser’s company Solyndra was given a half-billion dollar loan guarantee by the Green Regime’s Department of Energy (DOE), structured in such a way that if the company hit the wall, the American taxpayer (as opposed to the billionaire bundler) would be liable for the loan. And hit the wall it did.

The regulatory side of crony green capitalism is the administration's jihad against all fossil fuel industries.

Well, now we learn that the entrepreneurial genius, Kaiser, this bien-pensant billionaire who wants so very much to help his country — paid zero income taxes for years. He did this by buying companies that had unrealized losses that he could then use to wipe away his personal income taxes. Kaiser is an interesting pal for a president who has shown deep fondness for bashing “millionaires and billionaires” for not paying “their fair share” in taxes.

It also turns out that an advisor for the loan program that shoveled the cash at Solyndra was — by an astonishing coincidence — a huge Obama fundraiser. This fellow, Steve Spinner, raised over a half-million dollars for Obama. And he is also — by an even more astonishing coincidence — the husband of a lawyer whose firm represented the company during its application for the loan. Moreover, despite the fact that Spinner agreed in writing to stay out of the loan process, emails show that he was involved up to his eyebrows.

It has also come to light that RockPort Capital, one of Solyndra’s biggest investors (and a board member) used its seat on a Pentagon panel that exists to help the Armed Forces identify useful new technologies to push Solyndra on the military. While RockPort disclosed that it had an investment in Solyndra, it never mentioned that the latter was a financial basket-case.

We now also learn that at least four other solar energy firms that received massive loan guarantees had executives and board members who were big donors to major Democratic politicians. These companies include Abengoa SA, First Solar, SolarReserve, and SunPower Corporation.

Start with Abengoa, a Spanish company. (Spain, remember, embraced wind and solar as the key to a jobs renaissance a decade ago. But green energy proved a veritable economic Black Plague for a country that has massive state-induced financial problems.) It turns out that Abengoa has worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to get nearly $3 billion in loan guarantees from the Regime to finance Arizona solar farms.

First Solar, upon which the Regime has lavished over $2 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees, is likewise a supporter of the self-same Regime. Its founder and CEO Michael Ahearn donated nearly $125,000 to Democrats in the last election. He cleared nearly $69 million by selling some of his stock last month, even though the company cannot qualify for another loan from the DOE. Ahearn is clearly using the guarantees to keep a shaky company afloat, even as he sells his personal stock. His $125k investment in crony green capitalism has paid off big time — $69 million — while the taxpayer faces a $2.1 billion hosing. No, no corruption there!

SolarReserve is even more choice. The aforementioned billionaire bundler Kaiser (the Solyndra genius) also owns a majority of this rotten company, which got a tidy $737 million taxpayer-backed loan guarantee from the DOE. His company, Argonaut, has a voting share on the SolarReserve board of directors. Another member of the SolarReserve board of directors is one James McDermott, who just happens to have given over $60,000 to various Democrats since 2008, with about half going to Obama’s campaign. McDermott’s company, US Renewable Energy Group, has also donated heavily to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), who needs no introduction.

Moreover, another SolarReserve board member, Lee Bailey, is a lavish campaign donor to Regime members and other prominent Democrats. Not to mention the fact that yet another board member, Jasandra Nyker, is partners with the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in an investment company (Pacific Corporate Asset Management). And SolarReserve paid $100K in fees to a lobbying firm headed by Obama’s transitional team leader John Podesta, to push its loan and other interests.

Then there is SunPower, whose stock price has recently plummeted with its projection of losses for this year and next. It received a $1.2 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantee, even after it announced that it would be building its solar panels in a new plant — in Mexico! So much for the idea that “green jobs,” paid for by Americans, would go to Americans.

SunPower gave $14,650 to Congressional Democrats in 2010 (and $500 to one Republican), with about a fourth of the money going to Reid. Oh, and the company paid nearly $300K to a lobbying firm headed by Reid’s close associate Patrick Murphy. Another major SunPower lobbyist just happens to be the son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who touted for the company in Congress, and publicity-toured its plant with the Regime’s interior secretary, Ken Salazar. The right honorable Rep. Miller also received funds for his own campaign war chest from the company in question.

SunPower, by the way, now has a market capitalization of only $800 million, not much in the face of corporate debt of $820 million, and is facing a mass of investor lawsuits. No doubt it will, like Solyndra before it, eventually hit the wall and hose the taxpayers.

In general, the solar energy boom is going bust, because it was solely a function of political, not market, forces. Taxpayer money was shoveled to economic losers, to enrich the crony capitalists who shoveled money at the Regime.

Let’s turn next to the latest news on electric cars (EVs). Start with the frisky Frisker fiasco.

Frisker Automotive is a Finnish company that makes pricey EVs — cars in the $100K range, sticker price, making them attractive to movie stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, but few others. Fisker was given — yes, you guessed it! — a $529 million dollar taxpayer loan guarantee from the Energy Department. No doubt pushing the idea was Reverend Al Gore, the Green Giant who is also a major investor in — Fisker! (Gore, by the way, has already earned tens of millions from preaching the environmentalist religion, making him eerily similar to a corrupt televangelist.) Also on the list of investors in Fisker Automotive are several big donors to the Obama regime, and also John Doerr, one of Obama’s advisors.

So much for the idea that “green jobs,” paid for by Americans, would go to Americans.

The Regime justified the loan on the usual lying basis, i.e., that it would bring jobs to Americans. Vice President and Chief Buffoon Joe Biden bragged that the Fisker loan would create “thousands” of American manufacturing jobs. But Fisker has just announced that because it couldn’t find any facility in America suitable for building its cars, it will build them in Finland. Again, so much for the idea that American tax dollars are bringing jobs to America. Oh, and Fisker's electric motor and batteries are made in China! All of these cars will get a $7,500 tax credit, meaning that the few rich buyers of the Finnish-made cars with Chinese-made innards will have part of the tab covered by average-incomeAmerican taxpayers. Comedy writers must have scripted this.

The kicker is that the Fiskers that were recently showcased in DC are not pure EVs, but hybrids, whose gas mileage is about that of an older model Ford Explorer.

By the bye, also receiving a similar-size taxpayer loan guarantee is Tesla Motors. Tesla’s main investors include Larry Paige and Sergey Brin, both Google-billionaires who lavishly supported Obama. So much for their corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.”

Then there is EnerDel, a maker of lithium-ion car batteries. Back in 2009, Obama doled out $2.4 billion in grants to battery makers to support EVs, including $118 million to EnerDel. Again, the insufferably dense Joe Biden saucily minced around two EnerDel plants in Indiana, boasting before cameras that the administration wasn’t only creating jobs “but sparking whole new industries.”

EnerDel, which has never turned a profit since its founding nearly a decade ago, closed the last fiscal year with a whopping $165 million loss, a mindboggling $100 million more in losses than it had reported previously. Its shares have plummeted 95% in the last years, down to a risible 27 cents a share. Nasdaq looks like it will delist the stock, and Ener1 — the parent company — has notified the SEC that it “is in the process of determining whether the company has sufficient liquidity to fund its operations.”

In short, it’s a goner, and when it goes, the taxpayer will again eat a big loss. This company was dicey all along, but the Regime still threw money at it — because it is only taxpayer money.

EnerDel also got huge support from the state of Indiana, promising 1,700 new jobs by next year and 3,000 in four years. Unfortunately, it only employs 380 people, and they look like goners, too.

The problem is obvious, at least to everyone but the cretins and corrupt clowns who populate the Regime: the market for EVs is and will remain tiny, given their inherent limitations.

Now, let’s look at wind power. First is the news that Obama went out this month to raise money with a “businessman,” a supporter of long standing, named Tom Carnahan. They chummed it up at a $25,000 a plate fundraising dinner for the Obama reelection campaign. (That has a sickening ring, doesn’t it?) Carnahan is another bundler, having garnered between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama in 2008.

Al Gore has already earned tens of millions from preaching the environmentalist religion, making him eerily similar to a corrupt televangelist.

Yet by amazing coincidence, Carnahan is the head of a wind power company, Wind Capital Group, which just happened to receive $107 million in federal tax credits from the Regime. By the same kind of coincidence, Carnahan is part of the Democratic family that has long dominated the state’s political scene, and a brother of Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-MO).

Shepherds Flat is an 845-megawatt wind farm that will cost $1.9 billion. Of this, astoundingly, the DOE will pay the developers $490 million in an outright cash grant, and give them another $1.06 billion in loans. The developers are putting up only about 11% of the total cost, and — according to Carol Browner (the Regime’s own “energy czar”) and Larry Summers (its economic advisor) — they will reap a staggering 30% return on their investment. This compares very favorably with the average 7.1% that most utility companies receive on their projects.

And just who might these lucky “entrepreneurs” be? The biggest player is — wait, let the suspense build! — GE!, which is being joined by Google and a couple of other partners. Google, as I mentioned earlier, was a big donor to Obama’s campaign. And GE? It is headed by Jeffrey Immelt, whom Obama appointed head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. And he was a big donor to Obama as well, natch.

This is the same GE that has a market cap of $170 billion, earned $5.1 billion in profit last year, and paid no taxes at all. Did it really need the money?

The project is questionable on other grounds as well. It is being built in a region that is already experiencing electricity congestion (the region of the massive Bonneville Dam). CNNMoney reports that it will create only 35 permanent jobs, which works out to around $16 million per job. Not that GE really cares much about American jobs — it is shipping its medical devices division to China.

No, no corruption here. None at all.

By the way, geothermal is looking pretty putrid, too. Two large geothermal companies, Raser Technologies and Nevada Geothermal Power, both received massive taxpayer backing, and are both sucking wind — the same wind that the solar and the (literal) wind companies are sucking.

Raser Technologies received a $33 million grant from the DOE. After pissing away all that taxpayer cash, along with a couple of hundred million bucks in private investor cash, the company has now filed for bankruptcy.

And Nevada Geothermal — a favorite pet of Harry Reid — received $66 million in grants from the Department of Energy, as well as a nearly $99 million taxpayer-backed loan guarantee. But it has just revealed that it has never operated at a profit for even one lousy day, and that it, too, is facing oblivion.

Still another geothermal company, US Geothermal, received a $97 million loan from the Department in February of this year, even though its financial filing with the SEC shows it hasn’t made a profit — in four years. And the stocks of two other geothermal companies that also got DOE loans are down 60% to 80%. These are just some of the tidbits of recent news from the taxpayer-supported green energy front.

Now, every time I report on the green "capitalism" that has been shoved down the throat of the American taxpayer by this corrupt Regime, I get wails of tearful anger from its supporters. The wails are of two types.

1. I am told that Republicans (especially the Evil Bush) have also supported various green energy projects. So, for example, the aforementioned Raser Technologies was backed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). I am aware of that, and I criticized Bush in these very pages for doing the same thing.

But please spare me the simple-minded faux equation of the past administration with this one. There are massive differences in scale and focus. Bush did fund some green energy projects, but never on this massive scale. And his administration allowed oil, coal, and natural gas to flourish, and took the heat for it. He was pilloried for being too fond of fossil fuels. He was portrayed in the mainstream press as a creature of the oil industry; and Cheney and Halliburton — God, we never heard the end of that. Bush at least tried to push everything. . . . I certainly would have much preferred that he had pushed, or freed up, only what works (fossil fuels and nuclear power), but his approach was certainly better than the present crusade against fossil fuels, inaction on nuclear energy, and a massive splurge in technologies that are proven losers, yet owned by supporters.

The problem is obvious, at least to everyone but the cretins and corrupt clowns who populate the Regime: the market for electric vehicles is and will remain tiny.

You have to be blind to all recent history not to comprehend that since Carter at least, the Democrats have been by far more focused than Republicans on pushing inefficient green energies. Granted, Public Choice Theory posits that all politicians (Democrat, Republican, Communist, or Libertarian) are self-interested, so will be prone to spend public resources to advance their careers. But the point here is that precisely because green energies are absolutely commercially unviable without subsidies, while fossil fuels are extremely viable, a fossil fuels based energy program won’t need much subsidization, so will leave less scope for paying off supporters.

Really, if Obama dropped hydrogen bombs on every major red state in America, these same apologists would squeal, “But Bush bombed Iraq!”

2. I am told that I am being “hyperbolic.” In no way, these Regime apologists yelp, can the Green Regime be compared to, say, that of Putin.

My response is to ask the reader, with all we now know of the crony car capitalism, the crony green energy capitalism, and the numerous other crony dealings between the Regime and its supporters over the last three years, whether the comparison isn’t just. You decide: am I really being hyperbolic, or are the supporters of the Regime being merely obtuse?

While entertaining that question, you might consider this point. What has come to light so far has come out basically from the investigations of the alternative media. The mainstream media have done very little to look into any of the Regime’s scandals (contrast the unremitting, endless investigations of Bush). The Republican-controlled House of Representatives held some feckless hearings on the Solyndra farce, and only saw Solyndra’s executives smirk and plead the Fifth. If there were — as there ought to be — Watergate-style hearings into the whole green energy boondoggle, as well as the whole Government Motors scam, just imagine (if your stomach can bear it) what would come to light.

it announced that it would be building its solar panels in a new plant rdquo; of American manufacturing jobs. But Fisker has just announced that because it couldn$2.4 billion in grants

About this Author

Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of Liberty. His recent books, Disturbing Thoughts: Unorthodox Writings on Timely Issues and Philosophic Thoughts: Essays on Logic and Philosophy are both available through Amazon.

Comments

Gil

Conclusion: the only two viable energy sources are oil and coal, period?

Fri, 2011-11-04 12:18

Jim Henshaw

Not "period". Right now, they are the cheapest source of energy for many uses. As technology advances, or supplies of readily accessible oil run lower, this could change, say due to a huge drop in the cost of manufacturing solar electric panels.

But, right now, almost all of the hot water I use is heated using rooftop solar panels, because they are cheaper in the long run for where I live (Hawaii) than oil-based electricity.

Sat, 2011-11-05 22:43

Fred Mora

Nice recap of the regime's energy policy and afferent scandals. If the mainstream media were doing their job, they'll have a field day exposing all of this. But they are too busy swooning at the Messiah.

All Obama needs to do know is hint at a possible bailout of media companies, and the few isolated critics will be quickly silenced.

Thu, 2011-11-03 23:09

Doug

This is a fantastic tour de force documenting the outrageous waste and incestuous profiteering at the expense of the American taxpayer. I'd venture that not more than 1 person in 500 has even a clue as to how vast the corruption is. As stated at the conclusion of this piece, the fact that the NY Times, the Wash Post (to which I subscribe), or mainstream shows like 60 Minutes, Dateline, etc., don't dig into this is shameful. Thanks for exposing this sickening practice.